Moominmama's Adventures

  Wherein Moominmama returns to Yellowstone National Park to work for five weeks and makes new friends... Moominmama spent five weeks working in Yellowstone National Park two years ago when COVID precautions dominated the experience. I wasn't going to write about the park again this year but the experience was so different this time that it seemed worth sharing in at least one post. For starters, the Moominhouse and I were in an entirely different RV park, near Old Faithful. That meant I was living amongst geothermal features (Grand Geyser above) for all five weeks, and seeing steam coming from the ground wasn't quite so unnerving after a while. I had an opportunity to do some new hikes, and hang out in the Old Faithful Inn with some new friends. That's thanks largely to my new friend Janice, who during our orientation collected all our phone numbers and got us on a group text, setting up wine dates and hiking trips with one another. We often met after work in the evenings...

  In which Moominmama views Salmon Glacier and salmon with bears, touching a toe back into Alaska before returning to the Lower 48... As Moominmama writes this, she has been allowed back into the U.S. after making it through the Yukon and an often smoky British Columbia. But one of the great joys of this trip turned out to be a side trip into Stewart B.C., which shares a border with the tiny town of Hyder, Alaska. If the area looks familiar, it's because it has been featured in films -- like The Thing and more recently, Insomnia , which apparently features Bear Glacier to the right. The two towns do look like a throwback to an earlier time, with old wood houses, small barns and equipment saved outside to mine for parts, but it's a fun and friendly place. Summer visitors are on the increase, but tourism is still a new source of income. The major industry continues to be mining. Gord, who once drove heavy equipment for the mines, is a local who invested in a mid-sized tour bus a...

In which Moominmama visits the Museum of the North, goes in search of sandhill cranes and locates Mike Mulligan's famous steam shovel... Fairbanks is as far north as Moominmama is going this trip and given the wildfire smoke, it was a good place for a museum visit. The Museum of the North turned out to be one of the most innovative and interesting museums Moominmama has seen! It is a natural history museum with traditional exhibits like the one above, but also a history, culture and art museum all rolled into one. Among the more interesting fusions is "The Place Where You Go to Listen," where composer John Luther Adams assigned musical sounds and tones to data streams of natural phenomenon.  So seismic activity is turned into deep bass notes. Solar flares measure as bells. Changing sunlight levels create tones in between. The data collected by the University of Alaska or other scientific sources flow into the room and reflect back as an ever-changing soundscape. Moominmam...

In which Moominmama explores Denali National Park and hikes a stretch of the backcountry with a park ranger... Denali, the highest mountain in North America, is a ghostly and elusive presence over the Denali valley that makes up most of the national park. Clouds often obscure the peak, and even under clear skies, it often appears like an afterimage. The south peak (the smoother bump) is the high point. The north peak is the one more pointed. At 20,320 feet, it is shorter than Mt. Everest (29,029 feet), but it rises from a plateau at 2,000 feet of elevation. The plateau at the base of Mt. Everest is already at 17,000 feet before the mountain rises above. I expected to feel more like I was in the mountains in Denali National Park. Denali is part of the Alaska Range, which looms over the park but at quite a distance.  Closer is the Outer Range, which I did get to climb. In this late-day light, the rock looks almost pink. But the bulk of the park is in the valley between the two ranges...

In which Moominmama sees Humpback whales team up and searches out more glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park... About half of the Kenai Fjords National Park is covered with glaciers extending from the Harding Icefield. The rest is made up of the cliffs, islands and icy waters of Resurrection Bay. Boat travel was the best way to see what the park had to offer -- and it had a lot! Moominmama saw sea otters, puffins, seals, sea lions and orcas. But perhaps the most spectacular sighting was a group of humpback whales on the Gulf of Alaska. They were circling under water and releasing a steady stream of bubbles that fool schools of fish into thinking they are walled in. Then the whales, in unison, swoop under and up, mouths wide open to scoop up the fish.  According to our captain, researchers have recorded whale communications under water and observed how each maintains a position in the circle, even as they swoop upwards.  It is a coordinated action and relatively new to the Gul...

Wherein Moominmama visits the Alaska Native Heritage Center and is forced to turn back during a hike near Hatcher Pass... Anchorage is home to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, which provides information about the 11 major indigenous cultures of this vast land. It's also an indigenous youth employment program and allows teens to both learn about their own cultures as well as share with visitors like Moominmama. Since these are living traditions, new works of indigenous dance and art are flourishing at the center. The dance troupe here wears a common costume featuring an eagle and a raven designed by a modern indigenous artist.  But each dancer creates meaningful additions to the blanket cloaks they wear, and they learn and perform both modern indigenous choreography as well as traditional dances from their varied tribal backgrounds. The center has space for performances, native artists at work, various displays and a large outdoor area with a path that takes visitors to five diffe...

Wherein Moominmama dons crampons and explores the inner reaches of the Matanuska Glacier... Meet the Matanuska, a 27-mile river of glacial ice flowing from the Chugach Mountains of Alaska.  Unlike alpine glaciers that hang from mountain slopes, this tongue of ice is created by ocean moisture as it delivers snow to the Chugach Range, and like all glaciers, over time, the snow compresses and squeezes out air molecules to form the dense glacial ice. Moominmama learned it can take 600 years for the ice at the back to make it to the terminus or toe of the glacier, where my ice climbing adventure began with a long hike through the glacial moraine. While Moominmama has walked on a glacier before, ( the Athabasca between Jasper and Banff in Alberta), I've only seen the surface.  The Advanced Trek offered by MICA Guides brought me into the features of the glacier, rappelling down  cliffs and walking along ledges to get inside the strange shapes that the ice forms as it moves alon...